A Platform for Cavity Quantum Electrodynamics with Rydberg Atom Arrays

Abstract

In cavity quantum electrodynamics (cavity QED) systems, the realization of strong coupling between light and atoms plays a critical role in the study of quantum optics and entanglement. At the same time, Rydberg atom arrays provide a promising platform for exploring quantum many-body physics. However, with the Rydberg-mediated interactions, atoms mainly interact locally. Coupling Rydberg arrays to a cavity opens up new research directions in quantum many-body physics with long-range interactions, creating a fully connected quantum network. Here, we introduce a new high-finesse cavity designed for Rydberg arrays. The cavity has a high finesse of 50,000 and a small waist of 7.25 microns at the cesium D2 line (852 nm). With these parameters, the cavity creates strong light-atom coupling, an averaged single-atom cooperativity of 66 with atoms at the cavity waist. To trap and image atoms, the cavity setup has two N.A. 0.35 in-vacuum aspheric lenses and will have two N.A. 0.5 microscope objectives, allowing more than 50 atoms in the array. In addition, this platform enables the creation of the Rydberg superatom, an ensemble of atoms acting as a two-level system. We expect to increase the single-atom cooperativity by 2 or 3 orders of magnitude with a superatom coupled to the high-finesse cavity. This thesis describes the construction of this cavity and the potential applications using this new setup.